But it was neither health care reform nor cap-and-trade that they were talking about, but a call for state and local authorities to spend more to make US streets safe for pedestrians and cyclists.

Designing towns and cities to make it more appealing and safer to walk or ride a bike would not only help fight the US obesity epidemic and improve health but would also reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, a report issued by the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership and Transportation for America said.

Currently, no state spends more than five percent of federal transportation funds on projects that could improve pedestrian and cyclist safety, such as building more sidewalks or "zebra crossings," the report said.

Groups including the influential AARP seniors' group and the American Public Health Association contributed to the report, which showed that the 52 largest urban areas in the United States spend just 1.39 dollars of federal funding per person on projects for cyclists and pedestrians.

And that despite the fact that nine percent of all trips in the United States are made on foot and 107 million Americans walk to work each day.

Too often, walkers take their lives into their hands in the United States, where streets are "engineered for speeding cars and make little or no provision for people on foot, in wheelchairs or on a bicycle," the report said.

More than 76,000 Americans have been killed while crossing or walking along a street in their community.

Forty percent of US communities either don't have sidewalks or have inadequate ones, the report pointed out.

Pedestrians comprise nearly 12 percent of all traffic deaths in the United States.

But less than 1.5 percent of funds authorized under a 2005 federal transportation law have been allocated to projects to improve the safety of pedestrians and cyclists, the report said, calling for government funding for walker and bicycle infrastructure to be boosted to match, in percentage terms, the ratio of traffic fatalities.

Stasi prison terror still haunts victimsBerlin (UPI) Nov 6, 2009 When the Berlin Wall fell on Nov. 9, 1989, Mario Roellig sat in his West Berlin apartment and was sobbing in despair. More than a year earlier the West German government bought Roellig out of an East German prison where he had been detained for trying to flee the communist state. The former political prisoner was since living a relatively happy live in the West. Roellig felt tha ... read more

.

Get Our Free Newsletters Via Email

The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2009 - SpaceDaily. AFP and UPI Wire Stories are copyright Agence France-Presse and United Press International. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by SpaceDaily on any Web page published or hosted by SpaceDaily. Privacy Statement